All posts tagged ‘Art’

I am fascinated by the geeky intersection and overlap in the worlds of art and technology. From the craftsmanship of Skylanders figures to the details of graphic novels, all the way to the gorgeous Mars-rover themed print I bought at World Maker Faire in New York or the detailed costumes seen at cons, many geeks are artisans too.

Using the mathematics behind string length and pitch, it came from a simple idea: what if all the notes were drawn as strings? Instead of a stream of classical notation on a page, this interactive project highlights the music’s underlying structure and subtle shifts.

His work uses HTML5 and JavaScript to quickly render the instrumental lines on screen and begin playing. The interactive part comes when you start clicking and dragging the dots to change the melody. (Warning: strangely addictive.)

First, head over to Baroque.me to play with the sound and watch the strings. Then read up on Chen’s thoughts behind the music on Chen’s blog.

Check out this video from DIY, the community for kids who make. They are calling it their ‘Anthem’ and it’s the latest step in their goal to inspire kids around the world to get their hands dirty and make stuff. Watch the kid assume the identity of his avatar, build a kite and then see the inspiration flow from there, all set to some nice uplifting music. More importantly of course, share it with your kids, and see where it takes them!

If you’ve not heard of DIY before, we ran a post back in April when the site first launched which covers the basics of the service, but in a nutshell it’s an online community for kids to share their creations. Unlike sites/services such as Artkive and Art My Kid Made which seem to be used mainly for flat paintings and drawings, DIY users are encouraged to upload all sorts of creations – including cardboard sculptures, Minecraft mods, electronic experiments, Lego models, photos of plants they’ve grown or cakes they’ve baked and so much more – take a look at the Explore section of the site to see what I mean. The whole process is aimed more directly at the kids themselves, with parents kept in the loop of course via email and a special dashboard.

Over the last six months, DIY has added many more features to the site including multiple photos per project, video uploads, social sharing buttons and comments – all of which have improved the offering greatly and made it much more like a ‘grown-up’ social network. Along with the Anthem video, DIY have also released a series of ‘How-To’ videos on their Vimeo channel, which can all help with their other big new addition – Skills. Think of them like the badges kids can earn in the Scouts or Guides. There are nearly 40 different skills already, including Physicist, Stitcher, Zoologist, Instrument Maker, Astronomer and even a special one for Halloween – Darkness Engineer. Each skill contains a number of challenges, complete any three challenges by uploading photos or video and you can earn that skill and have the patch displayed proudly on your profile page.

Cowbell Farm completed the ‘Paper City’ challenge

My daughter has already completed three of the challenges for Papercrafter (her current preferred medium) and earned her first patch. Now, after watching the video, she wants to try and get them all, so it looks like we’re going to have a busy weekend. I might have to learn some new stuff too if she wants to go for the Circuit Bender or Hardware Hacker ones! You can also retroactively complete challenges with projects you have previously uploaded with a couple of clicks. If the DIY Skillmaster agrees, you’ll complete the challenge and maybe earn another patch.

The whole site is totally free to use at the moment, which leads me to believe that it’s only a matter of time before the Skills Patches make the jump from the beautifully designed and illustrated virtual tokens to real-world embroidered patches just like those scout and guide ones, available to purchase for a couple of bucks each when you’ve earned them. I’d certainly buy them for her if that’s what it takes to keep this great service going.

The show’s opening reception, Wednesday, October 10th, from 6-8 pm, will feature a live performance — a battle, at it were, with dice.

“Two volunteers will take up the roles of Barack Obama and Mitt Romney and audience members will get to decide the fate of the election using Dungeons and Dragons dice, rules and attacks,” said the gallery. “Smith will act as Dungeon Master of the game, and the ultimate prize is his vote.”

The winner of the battle determines how Smith casts his actual ballot in his swing-state home of Ohio. (Note: It’s Smith who will cast his own vote for the winner of the game, be it Obama or Romney. Nobody will vote FOR him. That would be voter fraud.)

“Romney is a fighter. Obama is a Sorcerer,” said Casey Jex Smith in an email. “I will have to dumb down the rules a little so the battle is fast and furious. Romney will have a better thaco but do less damage. Obama will have worse thaco but do massive damage. It will essentially be all D20s and D6s.”

President Obama as slightly demented-looking “King Belian Shipsale.” The name comes from Wizards of the Coast’s random character name generator. (Image: Casey Jex Smith/Allegra LaViola Gallery)

“Using the world of sci-fi/fantasy, Dungeons & Dragons, and Mormon imagery as a springboard for exploration,” said gallery director Allegra LaViola, “Smith has created a world where Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are not just candidates in a race, but also but also mythical heroes in an imagined world.” Smith is a practicing Mormon, who identifies with Romney –”an unusual stance in the arts community.”

I asked Smith about his idea behind this show, which includes several characters sheets and other gaming-inspired works (and many works without any explicit gaming references). Why did he turn Obama and Romney into D&D characters?

“Ramparts” (Image: Casey Jex Smith/Allegra LaViola Gallery)

“I had already done portraits of them as well as John McCain back in the 2008 election. I did a series of male power figures that had an influence on me at the time,” Smith said. “I wanted to elevate these figures into mythical heroes through the lens of a language that I loved and was well versed in. The statistics allowed me to say more about the figures in a way that a traditional portrait wasn’t able to do. When this year came around, I decided to update the portraits and then create a narrative around their election year battles. My interest in Romney comes from my being a Mormon and watching this ‘Mormon Moment’ happen with some pride and trepidation.”

Smith is, essentially, giving away his vote. I wondered, did this decision represent his ambivalence about the election?

“I have put some serious thought into the idea. I don’t give up my vote lightly,” he said. “But would it be awful to say that I honestly think either candidate will do an OK job?”

Smith said he voted for Obama in the last election because “I was disgusted with the Republican party.” But lately, he felt the spirit of his late father “haunting” him and “prodding” him to vote for a conservative candidate. “I prefer the moderate Romney. I’m on the fence. Undecided,” he said. “So being undecided I don’t have a problem giving up my vote.”

This is Smith’s third solo show at the gallery, LaViola said, and one where he decided to “take on religion and politics.” As a practicing Mormon, Smith has an interest in religion, and this election cycle, Mormonism has been headline news. Instead of remaining silent about his relationship with his church, Smith has “come out with all guns blazing,” LaViola said. ”Smith’s incorporation of religion, fantasy and art history is both unique and unusual.”

Smith’s work includes “exquisitely rendered,” highly-detailed drawings (often ink on paper). The show also includes sculpture and mixed media works in pencil, color pencil and collage. Casey Jex Smith lives and works in Ohio. He holds a BFA from Brigham Young University and an MFA from The San Francisco Art Institute. He has shown his work at the Drawing Center, Yerba Buena Center of the Arts, and Swarm Gallery, Oakland. His work has been reviewed on artnet.com, Beautiful Decay, Time Out Chicago, and Fecalface.

[Incidentally, in the show, Smith was kind enough to include a work with a subtle shout-out to this blogger. In the below character sheet featuring the likeness of Vin Diesel, Smith outfitted the 14th level fighter named "Divleesin Banesguard" with "Gilsdorf's Studded Leather of Criticality +3." "I was reading and enjoying your book at the time I drew his portrait," Casey told me. "Your book meant a lot to me at the time so I felt like a shout out was necessary." Thank you, Casey. I have arrived.]

A while back I wrote a post about how I was dealing with the stacks of artwork that my daughter is constantly creating. My suggestion was basically digitizing it all — either by scanning, photographing or filming — and collecting it all in one place (iPhoto in my case). Just after I wrote that post, DIY.org was launched, offering a dedicated app and online storage for photos of the kids’ masterpieces. I loved the sense of freedom of DIY offered and how it’s built a real community of like minded makers around the world, all sharing and congratulating each other on their work.

The Artkive app’s picture screen

Artkive is a new app from a geeky dad named Jedd Gold, which performs a similar task but in a very different way. Jedd was inspired to build the app and start the Kive Company by his two daughters who, like mine, produced a “never-ending amount of artwork … and we’d feel guilty about throwing it away.” Like DIY, the app is simple to use and signing up is a painless process. Once you’re in, you add one or more children into the app and tell it what grade they’re in at school, then you’re ready to upload the art. You can snap a photo directly or use one in from your iPhone’s library. When you’re happy with the image you can assign it to a child, give it a title and add some comments. By default it will add today’s date but you can override it if you want or set it to blank. When you’re done, the app will upload the image and text to the cloud.Continue Reading “Artkive – An App to Help You Store Your Children’s Art” »

Here at GeekDad, we love a good word project. People are probably aware of my own exploration of poetry in Lego form. But, over at the delightful Brain Pickings blog they have provided another.

Book spine poetry is careful constructed using the titles of books, carefully laid out to create a poem.

I can see a whole sub-genre of sci-fi/fantasy book spine poetry appearing, so leaf through those shelves and see if you can come up with some geek-inspired book spine poetry and share it over at the GeekDad Community.

Developed by an Australian family as they drove across the United States on a two-year trip, Snapatoonies as an idea came in between bear sightings on a river where they came to fish for salmon (the bears, not the family). Snapatoonies can be seen as a series of DVDs that is a little bit late onto the scene, but is also fantastic and engaging digital content for young children, that would be just as much at home on a tablet in the back of the car as it might be on your television.

Snapatoonies does not try to hide the fact that it is educational: It respects the fact that young children want to learn, that their brains are primed for it and just like the folks over at Sesame Street, they put the learning up front and don’t try to hide it behind baby talk or odd colorful characters. The mash up style merges animation types and real life images, but the quality of the content from the images chosen to the relevance to children’s lives is high.

The quality of the production for a small team with a background in web design is really high. The strength of the production is in the detail put into the learning: Small aspects like the repetition of words, and words being seen and spoken as an image that depicts that word demonstrate how digital content can appeal to a broad spectrum of learning styles.

The offering can be seen on the Snapatoonies preview site. I recommend you check it out and consider the value of such viewing for geeklets aged 18 month to four years. That said, I could really see an app development company coming along and engaging with Snapatoonies to turn this content into something that takes children’s digital content to the next level – with interactive video and quality learning content that isn’t all bells and whistles and touch points, but sound and purposeful interactivity through quality educational content.

QMx makes some great genre collectibles, and this latest batch doesn’t disappoint: Four 18″ x 24″ prints, each one representing a different Star Trek: The Original Series episode, with a retro sensibility. The first set is available for preorder now at their website for $34.95.

The name “Phil Hansen” probably does not ring a bell, but you have probably seen his work. He has been featured on the Discovery Channel, CNN, CBS, Good Morning America, the Rachael Ray Show and Dr. Phil. His designs have also been used commercially by the Grammys, Skype, Diesel, Arby’s, Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum and dozens of other large and small companies.

Hansen: This happened when I just started to think about making a book, and I was experimenting with anything I could think of around the house. I was sitting around one day doing some drawing, and my wife handed me a banana to eat as a snack. They are not my favorite to eat so I decided to draw on the banana with my pencil instead. A little later, I realized that the browning in the banana could make a quality image. Drawing on the banana wasn’t flattering because it looked scratchy. So I thought what if I poke an image, it might look more natural because bananas get speckled as they brown.

Sims: What is the process for making art that has a very limited shelf life? Do you hurry and take photos? Do you apply some sort of preservative?

Hansen: I rarely try to preserve temporary art. You’ll more likely find me destroying it if it didn’t naturally destroy itself. A few years ago, I spent an entire year creating an art series “Goodbye Art” where I destroyed each piece of art after its creation. I feel that working with impermanence is a vital part of staying in the creative flow, and a great tool to further creative abilities. We tend to attach art with preservation and lasting forever. A lot of people aren’t used to the idea of art being temporary. But art for me is more about the experience in the creation process as opposed to the end product, which is why my work tends to be process driven. And what’s great about temporary art is it often enriches the process, that I can capture the final work as well as the degradation process as it transforms into another element. Like the banana for example, it is really entertaining to just set it on the counter and watch it degrade and change right in front of you. Tattoo a Banana celebrates a lot of temporary art so people can dig into the process and find new discoveries within each project. Some projects have their peak moment that lasts a few seconds, i.e., drawing on a marshmallow and sticking it in the microwave. Others like putting together a portrait with leaves will change from hour to hour, and taking pictures becomes a documentation process.

Sims: What can you tell us about your new book, Tattoo a Banana and Other Ways to Turn Anything and Everything into Art?

Hansen: As we currently live in a pretty unpredictable time, there’s a lot of talk about creativity, and how we need to be creative in order to lead innovation, rekindle growth, and obtain financial security. While it’s great to emphasize the importance of creativity, I felt the act of practicing creativity is more important. I thought about how anyone can learn to approach everyday life with creativity. But we can only be creative with things we have some knowledge of. So I started messing around with supplies around the home such as bananas, cardboard, potato peels, and plastic bags; materials that we are all familiar with, easily accessible, and affordable. By exploring familiar objects, we can break through any mental barriers about materials and techniques, and challenge accepted norms by turning anything and everything into art. If you can approach a banana differently than the way you have your entire life, then maybe you can approach your work differently, and weave creativity into other areas of your life.

Sims: What ages are appropriate for this book?

Hansen: While I expected this book to appeal to a younger audience of teens and twenty somethings, I really wanted anyone to be able to experience this book. To my surprise, so far there’s a huge age range enjoying Tattoo A Banana, from an 8 year old rummaging through the cupboards to get supplies to a 70 year old smearing her face on scanners. With kids out of school, these projects are great summer activities that are electronic-free. Older kids can do them independently or parents with younger kids can do them as family activities. The creative processes in Tattoo A Banana are quite different than what’s typically taught in art classes, so it creates great learning opportunities as well for kids of any age. And last but not least, there are dads who are really digging the science behind some of the projects, and make themselves look super cool to their kids in the process.

Sims: What is the process like to do a TED Talk?

Hansen: It’s very exciting to be part of the TED2013 Worldwide audition, the very first crowd-sourced TED event. When I first found out about this audition, I thought maybe it’s a long shot because I’ve never given a talk before but felt like I had something that I really wanted to share. I even went to toastmasters for a month but it was too formal and rigid for me. Soon after, I realized that TED is not about getting rid of your ums or where to put your arms, it’s about the idea behind your talk, and how that idea can impact others. Interestingly, my TEDTalk topic is about using limitations to drive creativity. I felt like I did just that with the audition process. Before the audition, I’d wanted to put a talk together for a while but just didn’t know where to start. As they limited the auditions to very short timed videos, as well as a quick turnaround, I quickly formed a talk. This really helped me focus on my key points, and I felt like I went from not having a clue on how to give a talk to being in front of a TED audience in NYC overnight.

Sims: I see that you are known as a “multimedia artist.” What exactly does that entail?

Hansen: In high school, my obsession with pointillism ended up damaging nerves in my right hand resulting in a permanent jitter. I couldn’t do the pointillism that I loved, so I started experimenting with methods where the shake wouldn’t affect my work. I discovered that if I worked in a larger scale with bigger materials, my hand wouldn’t really hurt. I became enthralled in exploring new materials and new processes that I have turned anything and everything into art. One week I may turn my chest into a canvas, and then the next week, I’m working with hundreds of live worms.

Sims: What do you credit for your international fame? Was it the YouTube videos that went viral? Was there a ‘magic’ solution?

Hansen: Yes, I contribute a lot of it to YouTube videos. I’m constantly excited about the way the Digital Age has transformed how we access information and communicate. It allows me to get my work out quickly and I’m able to do art projects that are viewer contributed. I also work pretty hard, and focus on things I love doing. I’m not sure if there’s a “magic” solution…the only thing that comes to mind is my horrible memory, so I keep forgetting all the failures I’ve had along the way and relentlessly truck along.

Sims: What do you do to get the creative juices flowing? What gets you out-of-the-box?

Hansen: There are a lot of different things I do, and some of which I touched on earlier. The best way to stay creative is to do many different creative things so I have more connected dots to form new ideas. Sometimes the creative juice just flows more naturally than other times. Those are the days I sit down and generate ideas all day long. If I hit a wall, I try to do something relaxing, usually taking a long walk. The reason I take long walks is because it takes awhile for my mind to quiet down and reach that almost meditative place where it can wander freely and unexpectedly.

Sims: If you could have anything in the world for a canvas, what would it be? Statue of Liberty? Sears Building? The city of Dubai?

Hansen: The first thing that comes to mind is a treeless mountain side completely covered with pristine snow. I want to draw a huge picture using a pump sprayer full of water dyed black.

Sims: What is really next for Phil Hansen?

Hansen: I’ve always wanted to do work that bridges the gap between the general public and the art world. Making Tattoo A Banana inspired me to recently kick off a creativity webshow PITW (Phil in the Whaaat), fun, fast-paced instructional videos that are as entertaining as the projects themselves. You end up with projects like how to paint with Coca-Cola, constructing a cardboard beard, and printing images on toilet paper. I hope to build PITW.com as a place for anyone to practice creativity in a supportive environment. I also hope to be involved in speaking engagements in the near future; giving a full TEDTalk would be a great! And lastly, surprising projects pop up here and there so I’m excited but not sure what’s next for me in this regard.

When I was a kid the only thing I loved more than comics were comic book resources, and in the absence of Wikipedia – not to mention, if you can believe it, the commercial internet – I was largely limited to encyclopedic collections like the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe. These massive volumes featured information on characters’ powers, affiliations and often lengthy missives regarding their elaborate histories alongside detailed illustrations.

Many a family road trip was saved in my young mind when I’d discover one of these sacred tomes tucked away in the comic book rack of some rundown gas station or backwater drug store. I would lose myself in the pages, obsessing over the minutiae of my favorite characters, and often unearthing fascinating new discoveries like Killraven and Devil Dinosaur.

If you, like me, pored over the pages of these classic guidebooks, then a new collaborative art project entitled the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Reduxe might be right up your alley. Spearheaded by Washington-based artist Calamity Jon, it’s an ongoing anthology that pairs original entries from the series with brand new illustrations from contemporary designers.

New pages are posted regularly, and there’s even an easy-to-understand submission process for artistic-types itching to participate.

You may recall the sound of Pi or the sound Tau, two inspirational videos created and composed by Michael John Blake to musically translate the mathematical result of both. Now, just in time for Phi day Blake has released his video for Phi, the golden ratio. Phi, to put it in numbers, is: Phi = φ = 1.61803398874989484820458683436563811772… and so on.

Phi has been used in musical composition, in art (Dali used the golden ratio in his piece “The Sacrament of the Last Supper”), architecture, math and of course in nature. Well, it’s less used in nature than found in nature. To translate into exact musical form, Blake used the first 39 digits of Phi and set the tempo at 161.8 BPM. It is a beautifully composed and shot video that gives math an endearing soundtrack.

From the YouTube page:

“What Phi (the golden ratio) Sounds Like” is a musical interpretation of the mathematical constant Phi. The formula I use to translate the digits of Phi into music is as follows: